With her Emmy Award-winning documentary 'Selling of Innocents', Ruchira Gupta has effectively showcased the plight of women involved in the sex trafficking between India and Nepal.

What started as a career in journalism 15 years ago for Ruchira Gupta, has today turned into a quest for social justice and a fight for women's rights. So while she works at UNICEF in New York as Communications Officer, she also spends time at 'Apne Aap', her NGO for sex workers in Mumbai. Coping with several jobs simultaneously, is second nature to this upright woman.

Ruchira's career began at The Sunday Observer. An MA in English Literature and a Fulbright scholar, "I was lucky enough to get a sound education and the freedom to explore my abilities, despite being born a woman in a patriarchal society," she exclaims.

Soon Ruchira shifted base to Delhi and joined Business India covering health issues, women's development and the violation of children's rights in Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and India. Her tryst with filmmaking started here, when she produced a 13-episode political show called Zero Hour for Business India Television.

Ruchira then took a career move to BBC, producing and directing documentaries on women and children-related issues in South Asia. While on the job, Ruchira came across innumerable atrocities committed in the sex trafficking trade. Thus was born 'Selling of Innocents', a documentary that effectively portrays this trade between the two neighbouring countries, India and Nepal. The film was premiered by UNICEF and HBO. "I was driven by a desire to fight for social justice," she informs. The documentary won Ruchira an Emmy Award for outstanding investigative journalism in 1997, which also made her the only Indian woman to have won such an award.

Her business credo: "If you want to succeed, never hurt anyone and if you cannot change an unfair situation, talk about it". Personal ambitions too are taboo. "I am keenly interested in other causes, like organising women to fend for themselves or supporting women and girls to end trafficking and prostitution. In fact, the greatest moment in my career was when I met a villager in Nepal who said he would never let his daughters go to Mumbai after he saw my film", says Ruchira. She is also fluent in Nepali, German, Hindi, Bengali and Urdu.

And how does the lady with a cinematic mission unwind? "I love to catch up with my friends or read a book", she says.

Her advice for women wanting to fight for a similar cause: "Work hard. Never give up, and remember, life is not about working your way up the corporate ladder, but also about contributing something to the world through everything you do, not just some charity at the end of the day".

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